The Motorcyclist<\/em> George Elliott Clarke, an accomplished poet, playwright and essayist, turns his considerable talent to writing a novel offering a protagonist infrequently portrayed in Canadian literature. The Motorcyclist<\/em> depicts a year in the life of Carl Black, a young black man in post-war Halifax. Told with energetic and lyrical prose, the author, a Toronto-based writer born and raised in Windsor, Nova Scotia, was inspired by the motorcycle diary of his father. Clarke creates a character who is neither hero nor anti-hero, but rather one man attempting to negotiate his way within an environment that is limiting, laden with \u2018British\u2019 culture and potent with hostility. A \u2018player\u2019 in the dating world, Carl juggles dates with several females at a time as the novel progresses, aiming for conquest without entanglement. His pre-occupation with sexual gratification drives the plot, though not the novel\u2019s ultimate message.<\/p>\n Carl\u2019s other passions include his motorcycle, the \u2018Liz 11\u2019 (also referred to as the \u2018BMW\u2019 after its model designation). He has an appetite for high, low, white and black culture\u2014despite only having a grade 10 education. Artistic and talented, he is frustrated with work at the railway yard and dreams of a better situation.<\/p>\n Carl also has buddies\u2014one black friend will \u201csteal\u201d his \u2018girl\u2019, others join him on motorcycle rides. The lingo of the era lends an authenticity to the narration and echoes Beat generation authors, as this description of Carl illustrates: \u201cSo he desires Coloured chicks and white <\/em>dolls (the Playboy <\/em>school of Integration). <\/em>He loves Beethoven, Bach, and his BMW. He classifies himself as the most incongruous\u2014most conspicuously debonair\u2014Negro in all of Nova Scotia.\u201d<\/p>\n Carl perceives and articulates life through a racial lens. There are history\/sociology lessons in this novel too. Black women are realistically portrayed\u2014holding family together and frequently abandoned, beaten but still striving. A back beat to the novel is periodic insertions of newspaper headlines Carl will glimpse, providing reminders of the wider North American culture in 1959.<\/p>\n Despite a liberalism which allows blacks in Nova Scotia to vote and marry whites, Carl\u2019s damning \u2018snapshot\u2019 is of \u201cwhite towns serviced by slapped-together black villages, while each white-ruled city fields a black shantytown.\u201d In comparison to the racially segregated American states, Carl believes Nova Scotia is \u201cjust a frosty salt-spray South.\u201d<\/p>\n Depictions of landscapes Carl rides through on his motorcycle are sensual and gritty, as is this sketch of the port of Halifax: \u201c\u2026.the harbour piers, docks, wharves, storage tanks (here oil, there molasses), and multifarious vessels, some flapping sails and others belching smoke. The smell is rousing, too: fresh-caught mackerel vies with the Moirs Chocolates factory aroma; and there\u2019s the salt-water-laden gusts off the Atlantic, plus the diesel fumes of some cargo ships and the oily odours of other vehicles.\u201d<\/p>\n Carl\u2019s world view includes the city\u2019s social and racial divide. On one side of Halifax is the \u2018leafy South End\u2019 where some \u2018Negroes\u2019 are maids to the wealthy white families and on the other, a \u201crat-infested\u201d North End where most \u2018Negroes,\u2019 live. \u2018Coloureds,\u2019 (as black people were called), avoided the South End at night, Carl observes, fearing they would be mistaken for prowlers or prostitutes. Black peoples\u2019 lives have been \u201cpinched\u201d Carl believes: \u201cTheir static mobility was to shuttle daily from black warrens to white burgs where they could own no property nor travel after sundown and perform heart-crushing toil for minuscule coins.\u201d<\/p>\n Carl\u2019s motorcycle is his liberator: \u201c\u2026.Carl fears the CNR has him penned up and pinned down\u2014like a stallion, a Black Beauty, corralled by railway tracks and outpaced by those steel wheels. No wonder he\u2019s got to jump on Liz II and have his Freedom<\/em>\u2026..\u201d<\/p>\n A solo trip on the \u2018Liz 11\u2019 to New York City provides one such breath of fresh air. Liberated in this most liberal of North American cities, Carl soaks up great performances at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, takes in Broadway plays and art galleries, and savours the varied restaurant fare. He\u2019s too busy enjoying to write lengthy diary entries as one excerpt shows: \u201cSee large party on at Rockefeller Centre. Jukebox blasts jazzy chaos. Ginsberg\u2019s Howl<\/em> as interpreted by Howlin\u2019 Wolf.\u201d<\/p>\n Carl\u2019s interactions with the women he meets, white and black, do much to propel him forward and ultimately influence his destiny. Among them is Laura States, a student at the teacher\u2019s college in Windsor, \u201c\u201dwhere the States clan\u2014of ex-U.S. slave descent\u2014settled.\u201d She is \u201ckicking up her heels\u201d in Halifax when she meets up with Carl. \u201cHer skin is pass-for-white cream,\u201d Carl observes, \u201cbut Laura\u2019s dark sable eyes hint at her Negro cum <\/em>Micmac mix.\u201d Another portrait is of Muriel Dixon, a nursing student who is \u201ca liquorice-coloured woman, with a jutting, horizontal bosom, straight black hair, violet lips, and mocha-sweet eyes\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n Each tryst provides a narrative thread building a web of Carl\u2019s own making. While the sexual play is not subtle, the epiphanies are. As Carl\u2019s diary entries comes to an end, the author leaves much for both Carl and the reader to ponder. Beautifully crafted, close to the bone in its offered perceptions and true to the context of time and place, \u201cThe Motorcyclist\u201d is entertaining and thoughtful, a must read for Canadians on both sides of the racial divide. <\/em><\/p>\n Thirteen Shells Thirteen Shells<\/em> is a coming-of-age novel about Shell, the only child of bohemian parents living in a small community outside Toronto in the late seventies and eighties. This is Nadia Bozak\u2019s third novel and \u201cparts of this book are adapted from childhood memories,\u201d she tells readers, but \u201cit is fundamentally a work of fiction.\u201d<\/p>\n Bozak has an astute eye for the times, portraying Shell\u2019s \u2018boomer\u2019 parents as drop outs who create art and live off the land, but later enrol in post-secondary institutions in order to re-gain a place in the mainstream world. Shell is the wiser child who won\u2019t make the same mistakes, as she promises her mother at story\u2019s end, but who still finds inspiration from the rebellious cultural icons of her own generation, such as Patti Smith.<\/p>\n Each of the thirteen chapters is as self-contained as Shell herself. Each could be a stand-alone short story describing a stage of Shells\u2019 life. Unlike many novels depicting the protagonist\u2019s adolescence, Shell\u2019s journey contains more lightness than angst\u2014and this is refreshing for the reader to behold.<\/p>\n Shell has a loving father-daughter relationship despite her father\u2019s child-like eccentricities and her mother\u2019s brewing irritability toward him. In one adventure, father and daughter hike along the forested ravine to pick fiddleheads for a local restaurant. \u201cDad shows Shell how to pick: gentle, right at the base,\u201d the author writes. \u201cThe smell, each time, is a burst of both rotten and fresh. Shell tells Dad the fiddleheads look like they\u2019re from pre-historic times. But they also look a bit like seafood and just-hatched birds.\u201d This is a description of kindred spirits, and for Shell, their time together is valued.<\/p>\n Shell is eleven when her parents divorce, her father moving to Toronto. Shell\u2019s ensuing visits to him always involve unpredictable experiences, but no matter, they are together and Shell is blithely non-judgemental, managing to cope with the upheavals of family life.<\/p>\n As an only child, Shell is introspective and drawn to outsiders such as the child she dubs \u201cShark Nose,\u201d a former resident of her family\u2019s house. Shell will meet him again in her teens, giving dimension to her widening world outlook. Shell befriends a girl down the street too and observes everything going on inside their family home, including the mother\u2019s binge diets and the step-father\u2019s unkind comments. It\u2019s these telling observations as seen by Shell, which make the novel\u2019s characters memorable.<\/p>\n Shell as a teen is smart, mildly rebellious and curious. She drinks and takes drugs with her peers and is attracted to Macek, a romantic drifter, who fills her dreams. On Sunday morning, when Shell stays in bed: \u201cShe reads The Time of the Ancient Mariner<\/em> for about the tenth time since Mrs. Poole assigned it to the class last week, and then, eyes closed, she tries to not forget about Macek: voice like a rake pulled through gravel; the feathers of his shaggy hair falling back from cheeks dull with acne scars; rare smile showing off his Dracula teeth. \u201c<\/p>\n Shell\u2019s parents, despite their various struggles, continue giving their daughter gentle and loving attention. In turn, like a treasured seaside shell collection, Shell will hold on to fond memories despite the breakages along the way, as she moves in to adulthood. Unique as Shell herself, this is a novel that manages to remain realistic while providing touching moments of poetry and grace.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Today I Learned It Was You<\/em> Out of Newfoundland comes delicious contemporary satire from one of its \u201chome-grown\u201d authors, Edward Riche. A versatile writer of stage and screen too, in this fourth novel, \u201cToday I learned It Was You,\u201d Riche plots the imagined happenings of people in St. John\u2019s with a wit and wisdom we come to expect from Newfoundlanders. The reader is transported beyond the charming veneer of \u2018candied colored\u2019 houses rising from the city\u2019s shoreline, to witness the goings-on of \u2018real\u2019 people living messy, chaotic lives.<\/p>\n Chapters are short and snappy, with several laugh out loud scenes.<\/p>\n Among the story\u2019s shadowy but pivotal characters is Harry Davenant, a retired actor turned security guard and park recluse. When rumours spread via Facebook that Harry is \u2018transitioning\u2019 into a deer, local government is called to act. Enter former hockey player Mayor Matt Olford, a conventionally good looking man in his middle years. He will face temptation on both the home and career front as the novel unfolds.<\/p>\n Initiating the rumours about Harry, the half-man and half-deer\u2014writing the script if you will\u2014is aging, down-and-out author Lloyd Purcell. He visits city hall with his recently acquired love interest, the gullible Natalie Sommerville. \u201cHe\u2019s harming no one out there,\u201d reports the crafty Purcell about the \u201ctransitioning\u201d deer. \u201c\u201dHe spooks easily, so scarcely anyone has even noticed him.\u201d \u201cPeople want a selfie with him,\u201d Sommerville chimes in. With tourists to consider, is Harry harmless or a nuisance? Matt Olford and his council must decide.<\/p>\n Meantime a Facebook page about Harry \u201chad taken on a life of its own\u201d with a \u201cdynamic online community\u201d known as \u201cthe Deer Friends.\u201d \u201cThey all stood by Harry\u2019s choice,\u201d the author writes about the webpage, \u201cand took this shared belief as an opportunity to post pictures of themselves and share other items distantly related to the matter of the one-time thespian\u2019s adventure of self-discovery in the park.\u201d<\/p>\n Also peopling the story is Gary Mackenzie, a RCMP officer from Ontario who \u201cdid not like Newfoundlanders\u201d and desperately wants to be transferred off the island. Classy and lonely city councillor Alessandra Cappello has a much older husband with Alzheimer\u2019s. Clownish councillor, Wally O\u2019Neill gets on everyone\u2019s nerves. \u201cI knows, I knows,\u201d O\u2019Neill will say at meetings in a rich Newfoundland dialect, and \u201c\u2026.one udder matter\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n The paths of these characters and their partners connect and disconnect as each seek resolution\u2014both mundane and profound\u2014by novel\u2019s end. Riche proves the need for story\u2014for deeper meaning\u2014is still relevant (and entertaining), despite the superficiality of social media and \u201ctransitioning\u201d lifestyles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Motorcyclist<\/strong>
\nby George Elliott Clarke.
\nToronto, ON: HarperCollins, 2016
\n288 pp; $16.99<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
\n<\/em>by Nadia Bozak
\n<\/span>Toronto, ON: House of Anansi, 2016
\n<\/span>320 pp, $19.95<\/span><\/p>\n
\nby Edward Riche
\nToronto, ON: House of Anansi, 2016
\n280 pp $19.95<\/p>\n
\nGeorge Elliott Clarke, an accomplished poet, playwright and essayist, turns his considerable talent to writing a novel offering a protagonist infrequently portrayed in Canadian literature. The Motorcyclist depicts a year in the life of Carl Black, a young black man in post-war Halifax. Told with energetic and lyrical prose, the author, a Toronto-based writer born and raised in Windsor, Nova Scotia, was inspired by the motorcycle diary of his father. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2121,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions\/2121"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}